


of a golden hue

by allapplesfall



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:48:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29646708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: The good dreams about Jet are the hardest to wake up from.for day 1 of the d20 alphabet: "alone"
Relationships: Jet Rocks & Ruby Rocks
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Dimension 20 Alphabet 2021





	of a golden hue

**Author's Note:**

> i saw the word "alone" in the alphabet challenge and immediately thought about my girl ruby rocks. so i said, you know, i have piles of homework, but i'm gonna spend an hour on this instead. whoops.
> 
> hahahahaha this is totally not based on a dream i had last week!! haha!!
> 
> title from monsoon by hippo campus

She dreams about her.

Jet’s in bed—in _her_ bed, in Castle Candy, in the bed that Ruby used to jump up and down on as high as the mattress springs would let her. Jet’s propped up in the bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. Her black skin, missing its usual sheen, absorbs the warm light rather than partially reflecting it. Her eyes are shut.

Ruby crawls up onto the bed. She slips under the covers. With a gentle tug, she pulls Jet so she leans into her side. She watches the slow rise and fall of her chest.

“I’ve got you,” Ruby says. “I’m here, Jet. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jet doesn’t move.

“I’ll take care of you, okay?”

Days pass. Ruby takes care of her sister, somehow. Maybe she brings food. Changes sheets. Wipes cool cloths over Jet’s forehead. Reads aloud more than she’s ever read in her life, because she heard that, somewhere, didn’t she? That people can hear voices while they sleep?

The bulb’s light spills in through the sugar glass windows, cutting circles into the thick quilt.

One day, Jet wakes up. She smiles up at Ruby. “Hi,” she murmurs.

Ruby’s heart swells. Because this waiting didn’t hurt, not in the dream. It was just waiting. Just soothing and tending and all the things that Ruby has never been as patient and gentle with as Jet. But she did well. She looked after her.

And now Jet—her sister, her best friend, her _person_ —is awake!

She’s awake and smiling, even though it looks tiring.

“Hi,” Ruby says back. She wants to say something witty, something funny, something to make Jet’s smile broaden. She can’t, though. There’s a heavy pressing feeling somewhere beyond where she can think, and she can’t turn her attention to it because something tells her it will _hurt_. All she knows is that this, sitting safely with a living, breathing, smiling, talking Jet, is a good thing. An incredibly good thing. She thinks she might be crying. “I love you,” she says.

“Aw,” Jet says. “I love you, too.”

Jet starts to get better. Starts to be able to sit up on her own for short periods, to take food by mouth instead of intravenous glucose. More people come to see her—Pops, and their mother, and Theo. Lapin, with a dusty old book. Liam, who lifts Preston onto the bed so he can nuzzle at Jet’s neck and lick her shiny skin. They all laugh and kiss and hug and Jet smiles at them, all of them, of course she does, but she sticks close to Ruby’s side throughout. She trusts her. She loves her. She wants her there before anyone else—and that feels _good_. That feels so good. To be loved back by the person she loves best, no need for jealousy? It soothes jagged parts in her chest she doesn’t remember splintering.

Jet asks, at one point, why Calroy doesn’t visit. Ruby pokes her and rolls her eyes and changes the subject. The name _Calroy_ brings back the heavy pressing feeling and she won’t dig into that, she won’t.

Time moves like syrup here, golden and sweet. Ruby and Liam put on little shows for Jet, like the twins used to for their father when they were little. Jet laughs and heckles and applauds. After, the three of them curl up on the bed, telling wild stories and making shadow puppets on the wall by the light of the bedside lamp when night falls. But whenever something in Ruby’s chest starts to itch, Liam disappears—and then it’s just her and Jet, like it’s always been. Red and black, twirling together. Bright and unruly and untouchable and brave.

Jet stands, eventually. She stands and they go for slow, stilting walks across the room, down the corridor. Their parents and family gather to watch. They smile and clap. But when Jet staggers, Ruby catches her. When Jet wants to go back to bed, she whispers it into Ruby’s ear.

And maybe Jet’s never been this dependent before, but who cares? Of course something’s changed. Jet got hurt. But she’s getting better now, and Ruby’s by her side—Ruby will _always_ be by her side—and soon she’ll be okay again. That’s what matters.

“People are talking outside,” Jet says. She looks up at Ruby and her eyes glint. “Walk me over to the door so we can eavesdrop?”

Ruby matches her mischief with a grin of her own. She holds up her pinky.

Jet links with it.

Together, they cross the room. The floor is awfully soft, now—maybe Theo or Sir Amanda knew where to find some gelatin to fit beneath the carpet. They press their ears to the door.

“My queen,” someone is saying. “You asked us to wake you.”

“Thank you so much,” a woman says.

Something in Ruby’s gut rebels, because that is _not_ her mother. For a moment, she looks at Jet—Jet’s going to be queen, now, she decided! But Jet’s staring at her, confused, and her face is kind of blurry. Ruby blinks.

“Any updates?” the woman asks, and _oh,_ Ruby knows that voice. The awful heavy pressing feeling bears down on her chest and she reaches for Jet, yells for Jet, but something smothers her mouth and no sound comes out and Jet slips from her fingers like smoke.

Ruby’s eyes are closed for some reason.

She opens them.

She lies on a bedroll on a rock floor. Darkness fills the cave, broached only by a small fire in the middle. She squints at the other sleeping forms, searching. She sees her father, Theo, Liam, Cumulous—

And then, on the far side of the flames, she sees Saccharina, sitting up with her ear cocked to an attendant.

Jet isn’t here.

Jet will never be here. Jet is _dead_.

Something awful and hollow gouges holes in Ruby’s chest. Sick, festering anger swells like infection around the edges of it. Anger is better than sadness. Better than the all-consuming emptiness at her side.

She doesn't know anyone who went through life more _alive_ than Jet. Jet is the antithesis of death. Jet is loving and fighting and running and laughing and taking the world in her hands and wrapping her arms around it till it's hers. Jet had so much left to do. So, so much left to do.

But she’s _gone_ and Ruby’s _not_ and this was never supposed to be like this, this has never been true, it’s Ruby and Jet, red and black, twirled together. Bright and unruly and untouchable and brave.

They’re a plural thing. _The twins. The girls_. Ruby doesn’t make sense in the singular. She had wondered if she wanted to, once, when magic felt intoxicating and sweet and raw and like _something just for her_ , but she hadn’t. She couldn’t have. Because being singular is eating her and hardening her and souring her and she can’t do this. She can’t. She needs Jet, she needs Jet, she needs Jet, she needs Jet, she needs her laughing and walking and smiling in her own safe, warm bed in the syrupy mid-afternoon light. 

She wants to sob, but she can’t. The tears won’t come.

Ruby Rocks lies there in the dark, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! let me know what you thought <33


End file.
